MODERN WAR SURGERY

Evening Star, Issue 16225, 21 September 1916, Page 3

MODERN WAR SURGERY

Dr Alexis Carrel, tho distinguished French surgeon, for many years connected with The Rockefeller Institute for Aledical Research in New York, was one of the most celebrated of the world’s surgical pioneers at the outbreak of the present war, when he returned to his native land to offer his services us a surgeon. Dr Carrel declares that the science of surgery benefited little from investigations carried on during the war. The surgeons were too busy in patching up shattered and broken humanity to have any time to devote to extensive laboratory work. One of the achievements of the war in the development of surgery, Dr Carrel believes, is the use of a compound of hypochloride of soda in disinfecting wounds. In tho early days of the war it was found that the prompt and thorough use of a reliable antiseptic was absolutely necessary to save wounded soldiers. It was Dr Carrel’s colleague, Dr Dakin, who discovered the antiseptic solution which, being cheap, easy to prepare, and practical, was the means of saving many lives. “Aseptic surgery is all very well in times of peace, when wounds arc not infected,” declared the master surgeon; “but in war all wounds are more or less infected, and it is this infection rather than the laceration of bone and tissue that is responsible fer the mortality or the need of radical surgical intervention.”

Not shells or bullets, but wound infection, has been the deadly scourge of this war is the opinion of Dr Carrel. He and his coworkers have accomplished much towards reducing the mortality rate from this source, but it is his opinion that large numbers of soldiers still die of wounds which are not fatal in themselves, and which would yield readily to treatment if a powerful anti-septic were used in time—within six or eight hours after the infliction of the wound.